Grupo Sura Full-Year 2020 Net Income Drops 80% Year-on-Year
Medellin-based insurance, health care, pensions and investment giant Grupo Sura announced February 26 that its full-year 2020 net income fell 80% year-on-year, to COP$336 billion (US$91 million) as a result of the Covid-19 crisis.
Operating revenues dipped 2.3% year-on-year, to COP$20.8 trillion (US$5.6 billion), while operating income fell 44%, to COP$1.6 trillion (US$435 million), according to the company.
The Sura Asset Management division (pension funds, investments and asset management) net income fell 39% year-on-year, to COP$431 billion (US$117 million), although assets under management rose 8.4%, to COP$523.9 trillion (US$152.6 billion), according to the company.
The Suramericana division (insurance and risk-management) net income fell 46%, to COP$211 billion (US$57.2 million), on COP$18.7 trillion (US$5 billion) in premiums for sectors including life, property, health care, automotive and computer digital insurance.
“The generally good levels of performance throughout the region with regard to property and casualty insurance, especially in Argentina, Chile and Colombia, largely offset higher claims for the life insurance segment as well as higher health care expense incurred with the pandemic,” according to Sura.
In total, Grupo Sura allocated COP$1.4 trillion (US$379 million) during 2020 “in order to address the pandemic on all fronts,” mainly including health-care services and financial aid to stricken patients, families and businesses, according to the company.
Despite the heavy costs, Sura nevertheless cut its debt and foreign exchange exposure and “secured the liquidity required to meet its upcoming financial obligations in 2021 and improve its debt profile in the medium-term,” according to the company.
Suramericana’s “mandatory health care subsidiary in Colombia expanded its telemedicine capabilities, providing more than 19.5 million health care services during the pandemic, thereby ensuring a substantially lower death rate of just 0.63% among infected patients, which was a quarter of that recorded nationwide (2.63%) and a third of the world average (2.18%), at the end of 2020,” according to the company.
As for Sura Asset Management, “the procedure for our clients to withdraw their [annual employer bonus] severance payments was expedited and made more flexible in Colombia, the same applied to those claiming unemployment insurance in Chile and Mexico, this so as to help those who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Various types of financing funds were also made available, thereby providing liquidity to 1,282 small and medium-size companies in Colombia, Peru and Chile,” according to the company
At year-end 2020, Sura boasted of 37.5 million clients in 10 countries in Latin America.
“Thanks to the ability of our subsidiaries to adapt, maintain their pace of business performance as well as increase client loyalty, together with the benefits of Grupo Sura’s well-diversified portfolio, we were able to partially offset the impact of the volatility prevailing on the capital markets on the subsidiaries’ own investment performance as well as the drop in revenues received from [stock holdings in other companies] via the equity method, especially from Bancolombia,” explained Ricardo Jaramillo, Chief Finance Officer.
